Nevertheless, it was a very lovely scene, as I have said, with the hills tall and blue, and the snowy mountains looking down upon one through the long defiles; with the valleys green and fresh, and the streams bright and sparkling. Here and there, too, upon some rocky height which commanded the entrance of the gorges of the mountain, a feudal castle would raise its battlements, gray, and stern, and warlike; and either in the open plain--where such a thing was found--or in the warm valleys in the hills, were seen the villages and small towns of Savoy, with their grayish white walls and their graceful church towers crowning the loveliness of the whole with the aspect of human life. The period of the world's history whereof I speak was one of gorgeous pageantry, and gay wit and deeds of arms: a period when chivalry and the feudal system, just about to be extinguished for ever, blazed with a dying flame. Montmorency still lived, though Bayard and Francis had left the busy scene but a few years before, and Henry the Second had not yet closed his career in the last tournament which Europe was destined to witness. The songs of Marot and the wit of Rabelais still rang in the ear, and Ronsard, Dorat, and Montaigne were entering gayly upon the path of letters. It was in the year 1558, then, and towards the close of the day, that a small party of horsemen wound along through the bright scenery of which we have spoken. It consisted only of four persons, two of whom were merely armed servants, such as usually attended upon a cavalier of those times, not exactly acting the part of soldier on ordinary occasions, but very well fitted so to do when any particular exigency required the exertion of the strong hand. The third was a youth of no very remarkable appearance, in the garb of a page; but the fourth was evidently the leader of the whole, and, as such, the person who merits the most accurate description. I will attempt to paint him to the eye of the reader, as I have myself seen him represented by the hand of an unknown artist in one of the palaces on the banks of the Brenta.